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Articles

Being and Time – The Musical!

Grant Bartley sees the funny side of Martin Heidegger.

Who could have imagined a musical about Heidegger? This show was put on in Regent’s College, a complex in the middle of beautiful surroundings in Regent’s Park, just north of the centre of London, by its existentialist psychotherapy department. It was staged to help the charity Child Action Nepal raise funds to support an orphanage, and aim towards opening a second. Despite my initial disappointment at this not being a musical per se, for the sake of the orphans in Nepal I’ll let them off redefining ‘musical’ as ‘sketch show with music in it’.

I found it a good way to communicate ideas, illustrating Heidegger’s deep and tangled themes in Being and Time with plays and sandwich puppets for example. Heidegger’s Nazi past was suitably ridiculed, but his philosophy was explored for its own merits.

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